Awakening and Transformation Through Crisis and Change

We are living in turbulent but exciting times.

Everywhere there is political unrest, a seething resentment at oppressive forces, a demand for freedom and greater equality, has spawned riots and revolutions in many places throughout the world. Financial corruption and economic uncertainty are causing great personal anxiety and dissatisfaction with governments, corporations and institutions. Behind these events is the constant threat of ecological crisis.

At the same time, the emergence of new ideas, technologies and global interaction on an unprecedented scale is creating many changes, suggesting major cultural and social breakthroughs that will transform our lives.

Although each time period is unique, there are similarities to earlier epochs, where it appears as if history is repeating itself. This era is such a time and a study of astrological-archetypal cycles reveals a consistent pattern that has punctuated the stream of human consciousness for centuries.

Astrology The archetypal, symbolic, geometric system of astrology links patterns of experience in the individual and collective psyche to the cosmos.

Considered impossible by scientific materialism, astrology is given credibility by new paradigm science that suggests through quantum mechanics, chaos theory, string theory, systems theory and the Gaia hypotheses that the cosmos is a system, comprised of interrelated parts and guided by deep patterns of geometric order.

Similarly, investigations into depth psychology, by Carl Jung, Stanislav Grof et al, also give credibility to astrology by showing that physical events sometimes coincide (synchronicities) with psychological facts, and that human consciousness under certain conditions can have direct experience of the entire spectrum of cosmic existence.

Uranus-Pluto Transit A key component of the astrological model is transit analysis, which studies the cycles of the planets over time and the changing geometric relationship between the different planets within these cycles.

Two types of transits are studied: personal transits and collective transits. Personal transits relate to individuals and their unfolding experiences and potentials and are derived by comparing the position of the orbiting planets at any given time with the planetary positions at the time of birth. Collective transits relate to the changing patterns of collective human experience and are derived from the geometric relationship between orbiting planets at any given time.

The Uranus-Pluto transit is a key cycle that lasts between 115 and 140 years with every 30 to 35 years being a critical development phase in the cycle, lasting about 10 years.

The current phase occurs from 2007 to 2020, peaking in intensity between June 2012 and March 2015.

Archetypal Meanings of Uranus and Pluto Archetypes organise human experience into thematically structured patterns, which connect concepts, ideas, feelings, objects and events that have a distinct archetypal character.

Key themes for Uranus are sudden change, creative awakening, unexpected disruptions, psychological turning points and breakthroughs, shocks, radical changes in perspective, innovation and discovery, rebellion against old or repressive forces and revolutionary activity. It also governs sudden collapse of established structures, individualism and originality, creative genius, invention and illuminating insights.

Key themes for Pluto are the exposure and elimination of all that has been suppressed, denied or taboo: the fundamental biological processes of birth, sex, and death; the instinctual forces in the body and psyche; the transformative process of psychospiritual death and rebirth; catharsis, renewal and regeneration; great intensity; power struggles; politics; political extremism; and totalitarian regimes.

When these planetary archetypes combine, Pluto intensifies and empowers on a massive scale the Uranus archetype of rebellion and freedom, creativity, innovation and sudden radical change. Conversely, Uranus acts to suddenly liberate or awaken the deep, hidden and repressed forces of Pluto sometimes with catastrophic consequences.

History of the Uranus-Pluto Cycle When these archetypal principles are activated there is a clustering of events and ideas that illustrate the key themes for this transit, which are an intense desire for freedom and equality, the awakening of consciousness, transformation and sudden evolutionary developments. This is followed by slow development until the next cyclic activation when there is a further intensification of these themes.

An analysis of transit activity shows that there are two types of archetypal patterns: diachronic and synchronic. Diachronic patterns show historical and archetypal associations with events occurring during preceding and subsequent transits, suggesting a distinct unfolding cycle. Synchronic patterns are when simultaneous events happen that sometimes seem unrelated but at a deeper level share the same archetypal character.

Revolution For example, periods of upheaval, rebellion, civil wars and revolutions, coincide precisely with the Uranus/Pluto transit and often happen simultaneously throughout the world as seen in the 1845-56 cycle, where there was revolution in almost every capital city in Europe: in Paris, Vienna, Budapest, Dresden, Baden, Prague, Rome, Milan, as well as, China (Taiping and Nian rebellions), and India with the British incursions that led to the Sepoy mutiny.

The current transit has seen the mushrooming of revolutions in the Middle East and Africa, while riots, strikes, marches and protests are happening all over Europe, reminiscent of the French Revolutions of the 1790s and 1960s, during which rebellion and civil unrest was common place.

Civil Liberties In parallel to revolutions and civil wars is the development of movements to free disadvantaged and minority groups. Simultaneously emerging in Britain, France and America in 1787-98 was the first widespread public call for the abolition of slavery that eventually led to the American civil war. During the transit of 1960-72, we saw the emergence of the movement for black civil rights with Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela, and the founding of the African-American Black Panther Party

Feminism The struggle for women’s rights started in France where women were instrumental in the French Revolution.

The 1845-56 transit saw the emergence of women’s suffrage in the United States and Britain. The transit of 1896-1907 saw the founding by Emmeline Pankhurst of the Women’s Social and Political Union in England. The transit of 1960-72 coincided with the widespread emergence of feminism, the women’s liberation movement, and the era of sexual freedom accelerated by the discovery of the contraceptive pill. Women in The West have since become more empowered and play significant roles in the arts, business and politics, while the emergence of protests by women against repression in the Middle East, Pakistan and Africa is a key feature of the current transit.

Scientific and Technological Revolutions The Uranus-Pluto transits have their parallel in scientific and technological revolutions and advances that again display themes of empowerment and freedom. For example, major advances have been made in astronomy, aviation, chemistry, physics, biology, and manufacturing. Many inventors were trying to develop powered aviation at the same time, successfully achieved by the Wright brothers in the transit of 1896-07, which began a diachronic sequence culminating in the moon landings in the 1960-72 transit. After a period of relative disinterest, enthusiasm has returned during the current transit with the Mars rover expedition and the development of space tourism.

The transit of 1896-1907, brought both of the major revolutions of modern physics: quantum mechanics, initiated by the work of Max Planck (1900), and relativity theory by Albert Einstein (1905), which had their antecedents in the transit of 1845-56 with the formulation of the conservation of energy, the second law of thermodynamics, entropy and James Clerk Maxwell’s work on electromagnetic fields that transformed modern physics.

The transit of 1960-72 brought another wave of revolutionary scientific developments: Mandelbrot’s invention of fractal images, Edward Lorenz’s first paper on chaos theory, (1963): the discovery of quarks by Gellman and Zweig, (1964): the theorem of nonlocality, Bell (1964): the emergence of systems theory and the formulation of the Gaia hypothesis by James Lovelock (1968): the general acceptance of the big bang cosmology currently being challenged by the big bounce theory.

Surgeon Christian Bernard performed the world’s first heart transplant in 1967, the same year as the first liver transplant. The world’s first transplant (the cornea) was performed in 1905 by Thomas Starzl, and the current transit has seen the first face and cochlea transplant.

The Higgs boson was proposed in 1964 that explains how some subatomic particles bond to form matter, and was recently confirmed by experiments conducted at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

Entirely new developments also can occur in this cycle as in the Ecology movement that began with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, and in the accelerated development of computers.

Individuals At individual level, Uranus helps us detach from old restrictions, awaken to new ideas, develop intuition and reach a higher state of consciousness. Pluto gives us the opportunity to transform old hurts, traumas and sabotaging patterns and purge ourselves of weaknesses.

Consciously working with these archetypal forces will accelerate our mystical growth enabling us to emerge from any crisis greatly transformed and awakened. We are only at the beginning of the peak of the transit, but as shown here by a very few examples, a parallel exists between the current and previous transits. The full extent of which will not be seen until this transit is over.